Comment The American Dream? (Score 1) 192
I suspect everyone always knew this was nonsense. But is this (Gladwell) where it came from?
You guys make it sound like making millions in the stock market is dead simple. All your posts are missing is a link to an ebook that tell you all the secrets.
Maybe downplaying his gains makes you feel better about yourselves? But making that kind of scratch doesn't happen by change. Even best advisors from open hedge and mutual funds average around 25%.
Count the hits, ignore the misses. Maybe he was just lucky. And yes, someone can be that lucky. People win lotteries (not me!). And slashdot wouldn't have an article along the lines of "Several normal people played the stockmarket and on average did so-so".
I'm sitting right now in a room with about a dozen 'obvious' computers. Let's see: 3 PCs, one laptop, one Mac Mini, 2 Raspberry Pis, 3 Android tablets, one iPhone, one iPad. Yep that's 12. And of course there's also the wireless router and cable modem. And I'll go ahead and count my LCD TV since it's clearly a computer as well (especially when it locks up). Oh, and I shouldn't forget the Wii and PS2 even though I don't use those very often. Clearly computers -are- my toys.
I take it you're single? No slight intended. Whenever my PC count got above , where was the number I could keep off the floor, my wife would suggest that I 'pass on' a few to deserving homes.
Hey, look: a bell curve!
Well, except for the bump at "100 bpm or greater". I didn't realize so many squirrels read slashdot.
Squirrel!
(Ok, it's an old meme...)
whats a good way to try to make an intellectual snub at someone without adding to the conversation? I know, check spelling and grammar.
Missing apostrophe in "whats" - should be "what's".
Just getting into the swing of it.
When Fitzgerald died in 1940 in Hollywood, his last royalty check was for $13.13. Remaindered copies of the second printing of The Great Gatsby were moldering away in [publisher] Scribner's warehouse.
World War II starts, and a group of publishers, paper manufacturers, editors [and] librarians get together in New York. And they decide that men serving in the Army and Navy need something to read.
The greatest distribution of the Armed Services Editions was on the eve of D-Day. Eisenhower's staff made sure that every guy stepping onto a landing craft in the south of England right on the eve of D-Day would have an Armed Services Edition in his pocket. They were sized as long rectangles meant to fit in the servicemen's pockets. (Her assertion was it was this service which reintroduced American's to Gatsby)
--Maureen Corrigan talking about her book, So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
I remember once that someone carried a bullet from d-day around with him, and kept it in his pocket for luck. Once he tripped, landed on his back in the street. At the same time, someone in the building dropped a book from a window accidentally. The book was a hardback, fell - but bounced harmlessly off the bullet in the guy's pocket.
The guy always said that if it hadn't been for that bullet, the book would have killed him.
The Germans also had the Winter Charity (Winterhilfswerk), which printed millions of books for German soldiers, both propaganda and stories, humor, songbooks, etc.
I wouldn't be too surprised if the Brits and the Russians did something similar.
Brits did. My dad was in WW2, I remember seeing some Army issue paperbacks in the family bookshelves back in Surrey.
Brits also did free concerts (anyone else read 'The Cruel Sea'?) and suchlike. ENSA was the organization (can't remember what the acronym was for). I guess the UK equivalent of whatever organization sent Bob Hope around the world, entertaining the troops for the US.
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you should.